Post-6VDT TEST State of the Alliance

(Boodabooda, leader of TEST held an SOTA after TEST's defeat at 6VDT, the biggest battle in EVE's history. He also posted a version of the speech on TEST's forums. It differs slightly from the recorded version.)

Today we fought in 6VDT. We didn’t fight to save the station, we didn’t fight to win an ISK war, and we didn’t fight to turn the war around.

We fought today because we need to show the game that we play a bit differently than you're 'supposed' to. Because we want to show the galaxy that all problems aside we can still field about as many autists as anyone else in the game – coalition or not — instead of standing down and crying in the corner like other alliances faced with the same fate.

We fought because TEST stands together in the face of certain, guaranteed death.

I wanted to give Fountain one HELL of a sendoff, and it's incredibly appropriate that it took place in our home system of 2+ years.

This war has taught us many things – We’ve learned what we can do at our best, and we’ve learned what we need to do to properly support our FCs, leadership, and membership.

We made an absolutely fantastic showing today. We fielded more members than any single alliance has ever seen – we even had twice what CONDI alone brought – and we set a record for the largest fight EVE has ever seen by a few hundred pilots, maybe even a thousand. Hell, TRIBE pulled more numbers than anyone in the CFC besides Goons. Even our bros RIOT brought a big chunk of spaceships.

So with all that said, we’ve been losing a defensive war for about two weeks now. As soon as our big strong capfleet-toting allies had to run home, the CFC pulled out all the stops, and TEST was unable to keep up on our own. They practically rolled through Fountain unopposed.

This isn’t the fault of our members. It isn’t our FCs' faults, or our mildir’s fault, or logi, or recon, or our corp CEOs… This war has been an immense team effort, and one of the most significant things we’ve learned is that our team needs some improvement before we can function together well enough to pull off a large scale war like this.

What can be done about this?

First off, we’re going to undeploy and head back to NOL in Delve.

Delve is a slightly more defensible position, and our allies seem to prefer fighting here. But that’s not why we need to retreat.

We need time to do the work we should’ve done 3 months ago. 3 years ago. We have to clean up our leadership groups and structure in order to handle something as significant as a full on coalition-level war – or something as simple as record-breaking activity numbers.

The CFC will almost definitely attack Delve, either in a continuation of their full-scale invasion, or with prodding tests like we saw before 1-SMEB. It will give us an opportunity to put some strain on a rebuilt leadership structure and see how we function. I will be constantly reevaluating our position the entire time, but for now that’s the plan.

On the topic of leadership restructuring, we’re going to do something TEST has never seen before, and bring FCs even more into the fold of day-to-day leadership-ing; this will allow all leadership groups to provide them the proper support that historically has gone through a select 2 or 3 military people. That’s about all that’s set in stone so far, you’ll hear more later on. Also, Shortbus/Schoolyard are being reformed and given less stupid names.

I can only hope that you don't feel I've thrown away your donations to the alliance. Ultimately, the sov is here so we have something to fight about, and I felt it best to spend our cash in the bloodiest, largest, most amazing fight the EVE community or even the video game community at large has ever seen.

So fellow TESTies, follow me back to Delve, and let’s set out on a journey to make TEST the alliance this community deserves.